Brooklyn postal worker charged with stealing checks from poor people on her route

A greedy postal worker rifled through a bunch of mail bags and stole checks from poor people on her Brooklyn route, including residents of a homeless shelter, officials said Monday.

Letter carrier Vanessa Bandie teamed up with three other defendants — including an employee at a check cashing company who cashed the checks Bandie found, and then gave her a portion of the money.

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According to Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez, Bandie, 29, and her partners operated for three months, and stole more than $29,000.

“A former postal employee entrusted with the public’s most important and private mail, allegedly violated that trust when she and her co-defendants allegedly pilfered the mail and stole from the most vulnerable among us, including residents of homeless shelters,” Gonzalez said in a statement. “We will now seek to hold them accountable.”

Gonzalez said Bandie, of Canarsie, was approached on her route in East New York by James Black, of East New York, who asked her to identify envelopes that looked like they might contain checks.

Black, 30, along with defendant Lauren Johnson, 27, would bring them to a Pay-O-Matic check-cashing location on Linden Boulevard, where another defendant, Paul Daniels, 30, would cash them. Bandie and Johnson looked for envelopes from the New York City Human Resources Administration and other social service agencies, Gonzalez said.

Officials said the stolen checks ranged in value from $100 to more than $1,000. The defendants took checks belonging to 66 people, including checks totaling $3,700 from eight people who were residents of a housing facility run by the Bowery Residents’ Committee, a not-for-profit that provides services to homeless New Yorkers, officials said.

The four suspects were arraigned Monday in Brooklyn Supreme Court on charges that included grand larceny and identity theft.